WGST 2800: Decolonizing Narratives Part One

Hi everybody welcome back, This is part two of de

colonizing narratives.

So, in the last video, I talked about colonialism and

why we're studying it in this course, and I offered

an overview of different types of colonies, including what settler

colonialism means and how people understand it in academic research.

and I talked about three broad categories of settler colonialism.

Um these are storied as phases, but they're always um

happening. For instance, settler colonialism begins by by eliminating indigenous

land title in order to facilitate the settlement from the

foreign power.

And while we could say that that's the first stage,

and therefore because settler colonialism and Canada has been going

on a long time, we could say that that's over

now. Every time the federal government challenges and other indigenous

land claim, they're continuing the elimination of indigenous rights.

And so or they're trying to achieve the elimination of

indigenous rights.

So for that reason, elimination is not over, settler indigenization

is not over.

These things are happening all braided together simultaneously.

I wanted to go, I want to go into a

bit more detail about how these things work.

The reason I offer this three pronged model and I

should say that this three pronged model is developed by

two scholars named Emma Battle Loman and Adam J.

Barker. The two wrote a book called settler colon identity

and colonialism.

It was published a few years ago.

It's very good.

It's very accessible, very readable.

So, if you want to learn more about settler colonialism

and how it operates in Canada, I recommend you pick

that. Okay, so when we talk about settler colonialism and

elimination, what we're talking about is the ways that a

settler colonial system and or government, I'll use those interchangeably.

But the systems that work for the government is formed

fundamentally. Um in the case of Canada, the settlement of

the territories we now call Canada happened generations after Europeans

and indigenous people were in relationship on the continent of

North America.

So for generations, indigenous people and Europeans were in relationship

to varying degrees of success.

And so there were both really strong ally ships and

really vociferous conflicts.

But the Europeans who were in north America were um

not necessarily settlers, they were not coming to stay.

And so I'm oversimplifying all this because it's beyond the

scope of this lecture.

But at a certain point in indigenous european relationships, colonial

policy changed and it was no longer about trade and

mutual benefit.

But instead, um a colonial rivalry between the american empire

and the british empire, which ended up uh those two

empires had been fighting each other with the assistance of

indigenous people who were brokering various relationships.

And at a certain point when the conflict Um ceased

to a large degree the to empower the €2 empires,

Both turned on indigenous allies and began intensified colonial violence

against indigenous people, which facilitated the theft of huge amounts

of land, which then created an economy based on indigenous

exclusion. I'm already going into a little too much detail

there because I can tell that I'm oversimplifying the details

which I can get into a tutorial if you want

more information.

So one of the characteristics of this shift in colonial

policy from trade settlement was that the british negotiated the

seating of some territory from indigenous people and because there

had been this legacy of mutual benefit in many trade

negotiations for generations, when in the I'm gonna um locate

this story within the Ontario region, in particular indigenous, the

indigenous people with whom the british negotiated land sessions, negotiated

land sessions with the understanding that there was a down

payment and then they would be rent paid in perpetuity

and the british paid the down payment and then said

there was no such thing as the need for any

ongoing payment.

And what the british then did was they created a

colonial land economy where they would go into territories with

rulers, literally surveyors would go in with rulers and they

would map out what looked like a checkerboard onto territory,

Territory that had been used and cultivated for since time

immemorial by many different indigenous nations.

And the british carved up the territory.

It's a little boxes and would then offer a plot

of land to various settlers who had been allies of

the british for various reasons in the american Revolutionary War

or maybe they were priests or whatever.

And so settlers were given land for free and settlers

then built fences around that land.

And when indigenous folks with whom the land had been

to whom that land had been connected for since time

immemorial would come for rent payments.

They were chased off this land with guns and dogs

being told it was now private property, but that was

an imported economic concept that had not existed to the

same degree in north America prior to that.

So one of the ways in which uh, the legitimacy

of indigenous claims to territory was achieved was by yeah,

carving up the land into little chunks and then whoever

the landholder was, their name would be written upon the

map. So if you look at this map, this is

a map of midtown Toronto and you can see a

bunch of men's names on all these perfectly symmetrical squares.

What the british did was they took indigenous territory and

they re mapped it as patra lineal meaning.

They established a land exchange system where land could be

bought and sold like a commodity but only to and

from white men.

The only way women could participate in the land economy

was as widows or orphans.

Widows and um if they had inherited land from their

father would go to their husbands.

So there was always uh it was white men who

were treating inland.

So when we look at this map, names like this

continue to haunt our streetscapes.

They don't haunt our streetscapes, they define our streetscapes.

Um So white men's names continue to be the names

of streets, the names of bus stops, the names of

subway stops.

Um The original surveyors lines when they were dividing up

this checkerboard map the main thoroughfares between different plots of

land. Those are now some of the most um significant

boulevards in Toronto are the concession lines drawn by a

surveyor's tool.

Sure. So the elimination of land claim was achieved through

the tool of private property.

And so there's an invitation here, when you're thinking about

the relevance of colonialism to your own life, what's your

relationship to private property?

How many has your family ever owned property?

How many generations has your family owned property for?

Um What's your relationship to the property that your family

owns or not?

Do you have goals to own property in the future?

And what is invested in those goals?

Certainly I hope to own property in the future.

And when I imagine myself owning property, I think of

myself as successful.

I think of myself as having achieved something.

There are moments I feel kind of ashamed, I don't

know in property yet.

And all of those feelings I've inherited from a culture

that says if you own property are successful.

So if when you are property you're successful, that's direct.

Then if you are an indigenous person who has been

dispossessed of all your property.

That's one of the ways in which our culture um

define success based on colonial terms.

The second form of once indigenous land claim is eliminated

and settlers show up and they believe themselves to own

private property and the erect fences and they named the

land after themselves.

Then what we begin to see our origin myths of

how the country was built and throughout Canadian history, there

are there's all this nostalgia for pioneer stories.

Uh white farmers.

There are endless Children's story books.

I think of Little House on the Prairie, I think

of um tv shows and um even paintings of brazen

pioneers when pioneers are celebrated in our culture, what is

being celebrated, Our folks who made something out of nothing

and as a cultural myth that encourages us to think

of north american territory as empty and inactive prior to

the arrival of Europeans.

So it does two things at once.

It continues to erase indigenous dynamism and culture and vitality

from the landscape, not to mention legitimacy and legal entitlement

to be there.

So it erases um, it erases indigenous life as irrelevant

to the story of Canada.

And then it encourages us to think of white folks

as really belonging on farms, think about country music.

Um, and uh you know, I think of halliburton symbols

of Alberton culture, there's a way in which whiteness is

marketed as belonging in rural space.

And part of this goes back to the pioneer story.

So whenever people claim proudly that you know, You know,

they were one of the original pioneers in this particular

land. There's a notion which Canada didn't exist until the

white folks came up.

And when we tell Canadian history is beginning in 1867,

rather than since time immemorial, we are replicating this myth

that legitimizes colonial occupation and erases indigenous life from the

narrative. And then finally, there's the notion of transcendence.

So whereas the pioneer story is very clear, this is

a colonial moment.

They're building a nation.

When we talk about current Canadian life, we sometimes we

act as though colonialism is a distant memory.

It's not even happening anymore.

This is no longer a colonial um context.

This is now Canadian context.

So when we talk about symbols of Canadian identity, ideas

of Canadian the Canadian future, What we're fundamentally talking about

is a conversation about the cultural life in Canada without

mentioning colonialism.

And sometimes we see um images like this.

So this image of Toronto has the maple leaf on

one side, and then um, an indigenous uh symbol on

the left, I believe that's a medicine wheel image.

So sometimes there's a lip service paid to indigenous deity

or indigenous symbolism, but not necessarily uh with any political

power or authority uh, included in that.

So, to transcend if you're looking for symptoms of colonial

transcendence, The absence of any kind of conversation about colonialism

when talking about Canadian culture is one is one way

of looking for colonial transcendence.

Another way I look for colonial transcendence is looking for

moments of Canadian nationalism.

So when you go to the national Art Gallery and

you see what Canadian art is, There will be a

sense in which we don't talk about colonialism anymore in

that way of putting forth Canadian culture.

If you think about the CBC, CBC is not talking

about colonialism.

So colonial transcendence is to move beyond the colonial and

now could compete on the world stage as a nation

in and of itself on par with other colonial centers

like England or France or italy.

Okay, so that's a general framework for understanding what colonialism

is and how to look for it in various stories,

and I'm about to share with you my de colonizing

autobiography. In the next lecture.

Next video.

Not next lecture.

WGST 2800: Decolonizing Narratives Part One

Chapters

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated